When Woodrow Wilson was elected as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in 1897, his preacher father allegedly remarked, "I would rather that he held that position than be president of the United States." Fifteen years later he was both. Easily one of the most religious presidents in American history, almost all of Wilson's policies and important speeches were infused with religious concepts. The son, grandson, and nephew of southern Presbyterian divines, with six consecutive generations of preachers on his mother's side, Wilson viewed his political career as a sacred calling. As he remarked to a Democratic Party leader just before his inauguration in 1913, "God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States." As a scholar, Princeton University president, governor of New Jersey, then president, Wilson spent his entire career trying to further the cause of public righteousness. In 1905, he uttered his life's credo: "There is a mighty task before us and it welds us together. It is to make the United States a mighty Christian nation and to Christianize the World." Nonetheless, the 28th president was not principally a religious figure, and he didn't fit comfortably in any religious camp, either in his own time or today. In Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President, Barry Hankins tells the story of Wilson's religion as he moved from the Calvinist orthodoxy of his youth to a progressive, spiritualized religion short on doctrine and long on morality.

Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President (Spiritual Lives)

Biographies & Memoirs

Hankins, Barry

Historical

Oxford University Press

When Woodrow Wilson was elected as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in 1897, his preacher father allegedly remarked, "I would rather that he held that position than be president of the United States." Fifteen years later he was both. Easily one of the most religious presidents in American history, almost all of Wilson's policies and important speeches were infused with religious concepts. The son, grandson, and nephew of southern Presbyterian divines, with six consecutive generations of preachers on his mother's side, Wilson viewed his political career as a sacred calling. As he remarked to a Democratic Party leader just before his inauguration in 1913, "God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States."As a scholar, Princeton University president, governor of New Jersey, then president, Wilson spent his entire career trying to further the cause of public righteousness. In 1905, he uttered his life's credo: "There is a mighty task before us and it welds us together. It is to make the United States a mighty Christian nation and to Christianize the World." Nonetheless, the 28th president was not principally a religious figure, and he didn't fit comfortably in any religious camp, either in his own time or today. In Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President, Barry Hankins tells the story of Wilson's religion as he moved from the Calvinist orthodoxy of his youth to a progressive, spiritualized religion short on doctrine and long on morality.

Jesus and Gin is a rollicking tour of the roaring twenties and the barn- burning preachers who led the temperance movement?the anti-abortion crusade of the Jazz Age. Along the way, we meet a host of colorful characters: a Baptist minister who commits adultery in the White House; media star preachers caught in massive scandals; a presidential election hinging on a religious issue; and fundamentalists and liberals slugging it out in the culture war of the day. The religious roar of that decade was a prologue to the last three decades. With the religious right in disarray today after its long ascendancy, Jesus and Gin is a timely look at a parallel age when preachers held sway and politicians answered to the pulpit.

Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties and Today's Culture Wars

History

Americas

St.Martin's Press

Beginning with overviews of the Second Great Awakening and Transcendentalism, Hankins details the wider impact these spiritual revolutions had on antebellum America's social, political, racial, and gender matters. Twenty-four concise and informative biographical sketches follow, providing glimpses into the lives of key figures from the period, such as Transcendentalist Amos Bronson Alcott, feminist pioneer Susan B. Anthony, clergyman Lyman Beecher, tireless evangelizer Peter Cartwright, southern abolitionists and women's rights activists Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and the messianic slave preacher and revolt leader Nat Turner. A dozen annotated primary documents give the reader a feel for the period in the language of the time; poetry, essays, lectures, letters; and other sources are used. A glossary helps readers with unfamiliar terms and ideas. A bibliography and index are also included.

The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists (Greenwood Guides to Historic Events 1500-1900)

Greenwood

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) was probably the single greatest intellectual influence on young evangelicals of the 1960s and '70s. He was cultural critic, popular mentor, political activist, Christian apologist, founder of L'Abri, and the author of over twenty books and two important films. It is impossible to understand the intellectual world of contemporary evangelicalism apart from Francis Schaeffer. Barry Hankins has written a critical but appreciative biography that explains how Schaeffer was shaped by the contexts of his life -- from young fundamentalist pastor in America, to greatly admired mentor, to lecturer and activist who encouraged world-wary evangelicals to engage the culture around them. Drawing extensively from primary sources, including personal interviews, Hankins paints a picture of a complex, sometimes flawed, but ultimately prophetic figure in American evangelicalism and beyond.

Francis Schaeffer And the Shaping of Evangelical America (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))

Leaders & Notable People

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

" Colorful and outrageous, influential yet despicable, J. Frank Norris was a preacher, newspaper publisher, political activist, and all-around subject of controversy. One of the most despised men in traditional Southern Baptist circles, he was also the man most responsible for bringing hard-edged fundamentalism to the South. Barry Hankins traces Norris, the ""Texas Cyclone,"" from his boyhood in small-town Texas to his death in 1952. Despite scandals, Norris was a man of considerable public influence who traveled the owrkd, corresponded with congressmen, and attended president's Hoover's inaguration at Hoover's invitation. Through his preaching career he battled anyone and everyone he saw as part of the leftist conspiracy to foist liberalism and immorality on America. This account reveals a remarkable man who helped shape the current American religious landscape.

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris & the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Religion and the South)

Univ Pr of Kentucky

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Religion In The South)

University Press of Kentucky

Francis Schaeffer: Cultural Apologist, Evangelical Prophet

P&R Publishing

New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America

As the site of the Branch Davidian cult's disaster, Waco, Texas was an apt venue to hold a forum on new religions. Ten symposium papers, introduced by Davis and Hankins, both with the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor U., the book's co-publisher, discuss the cultural and legal challenges such movements pose; the role of women in them; anti-cult activities; and Bush's faith-based initiatives. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Religion & Spirituality

Davis, Derek

Christian Books & Bibles

Baylor Univ Pr

<div> Loathed by mainstream Southern Baptists, J. Frank Norris (1877-1952) was in many ways the Southern Baptist Convention's first fundamentalist. Twenty-five years after its first publication, this second edition of Barry Hankins's field-defining work God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism engages new scholar- ship on American fundamentalism to reassess one of the most controversial figures in the history of American Christianity. In this completely revised edition, Hankins pens an entirely new chapter on J. Frank Norris's murder trial, examines newly uncovered details regarding his recurrent sexual improprieties, and reconsiders his views on race in order to place J. Frank Norris, a man both despicable and captivating, among the most significant Southern fundamentalists of the twentieth century. Norris merged a southern populist tradition with militant fundamentalism, carving out a distinctly take-no-prisoners political niche within the Baptist church that often offended his allies as much as his enemies. Indeed, Norris was about as bad as a fundamentalist could be. He resided in a world of swirling conspiracies of leftists who, he argued, intended to subvert both evangelical religion and American culture. There are times when Norris's ego looms so large in his story that he seemed less interested in the threat these alleged conspiracies posed than in their power to keep him in the limelight. Finally, his tactics foreshadowed those employed in the fundamentalists' tenacious takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that would occur more than twenty years after Norris's death. </div>

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (America's Baptists)

Univ Tennessee Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hankins, Barry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hankins, Barry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hankins, Barry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President (Spiritual Lives)

Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President (Spiritual Lives)

Jesus and Gin: Evangelicalism, the Roaring Twenties and Today's Culture Wars

The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists (Greenwood Guides to Historic Events 1500-1900)

Francis Schaeffer And the Shaping of Evangelical America (Library of Religious Biography (LRB))

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris & the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Religion and the South)

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (Religion In The South)

Francis Schaeffer: Cultural Apologist, Evangelical Prophet

New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America

God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism (America's Baptists)